Nanteos Cup

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In 1997 I was involved in a UK documentary film about Jesus' visit to the western confines of England, and in 1998 I participated in a similar documentary for an American television network. I provided the genesis of the Sacred Cup (sometimes known as the Holy Grail) from Palestine to England in the custody of St Joseph of Arimathea. In the NBC documentary, I spoke from Glastonbury Abbey and in the UK programme the Grail Chapel at the Holy Grail Retreat Centre. As well as discussing the supernatural healing properties attributed to the Sacred Cup of the Last Supper, I talked about the visits believed to have been made by Jesus to England and the coming of the Grail to Glastonbury after the Passion. I must stress that I have never stated that the Nanteos Cup is the Holy Grail, ie the Sacred Cup used by Our Lord at the Last Supper, and personally entertain not inconsiderable doubt in claims of this kind made by others.

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Afflicted Places

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Dear Bishop, I read with great interest your fascinating book on the Highgate vampire, and visited Highgate Cemetery. However , I was unable to find the remains of the neo-gothic mansion, which should not be far from the cemetery? I could't find Crescent Road on the plan. Could you be kind enough to give me the precise address? I must also admit that the visit to the cemetery was so quick that I couldn't identify the sealed vault in the Lebanon Circle — just a question of curiosity. Thank you so much for your answer. God bless you. With best regards, Olivier Kourilsky.

The ne-gothic mansion was demolished many years ago and only a ruin façade of the original building remains. This façade has been incorporated into the approach to the purpose-built dwellings now standing on that site at number one Avenue Road on the corner of where it technically joins Crescent Road.

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There are certain places that remain seemingly afflicted even in the wake of the original contagion being successfully extirpated, leaving a sense of tremulous fear and sometimes an aura of evil so powerful it makes people feel queasy and faint. Two such places thus afflicted I am occasionally asked about are the Western Cemetery at Highgate, and number one Avenue Road N6 on the borders of Highgate and Hornsey. The latter is seen in the above picture from the first edition of my book The Highgate Vampire. The mansion was subsequently demolished following the exorcism about which I write in my book. In the early 1970s, there was much talk of satanic ceremonies, ritual sacrifices, demon raisings and, worse still, number one Avenue Road was confirmed to be the final resting place of the demonry that had contaminated Highgate Cemetery for many years prior.

The Hornsey Journal, 7 December 1973, recorded: “Neighbours talk of strange goings-on at night and mysterious flickering lights in upper windows. … Investigating the reports, Journal reporter Roger Simpson and photographer Ted Stormer came across unmistakable signs in a top floor room of a witchcraft ceremony. The Journal understands that this was a bizarre attempt to raise the horned god in a black magic ceremony. … Residents refuse to walk past the house, which looms behind overgrown trees.”

In my book, I recounted:  “Something evil was said to have taken residence and now stalked the lonely corridors. Mysterious lights were occasionally seen flickering behind vacant windows which stared down like eyeless sockets. … Eventually, the crumbling neo-gothic mansion was demolished and in its place twelve flats were built whose design incorporated the façade of the original mansion as though to act as an eerie reminder of what once stood at this site. But few need any reminder. … Many visitors … have reported feeling frightened as the chill atmosphere pervades the warmest of days. It is as if the very bricks retain the memory of its evil past.”

All that remains today, as seen in the above photograph, is the neo-gothic façade of the former building which locals clamoured to have razed to the ground following a series of demonic disturbances and, of course, a highly dramatic exorcism that took place in early 1974.

Another place still causing a certain sense of dread — in some even panic and nausea — among visitors is the afflicted tomb that once housed the demonic manifestation at the heart of the disturbances and deaths attributed to supernatural evil in and around the Western Cemetery at Highgate. The tomb, temporarily bricked-up following the exorcism ritual I performed in 1970, can be seen at the far end of the Egyptian Avenue leading to the Circle of Lebanon in Highgate Cemetery in the pictures above and below. Today visitors are not allowed to roam the Western Cemetery, and have not been allowed to do so since the mid-1970s. Visitors can nevertheless take a guided tour organised by the Friends of Highgate Cemetery where they will, understandably, be closely monitored.

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Electronic Voice Phenomena

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Hello Bishop. I would like to ask what is your opinion on Electronic Voice Phenomena? A lot of paranormal investigators have captured EVPs with their digital recorders. The subject seems to be coming very popular in America. I myself have captured what appears to be voices with my digital recorder. One of the voices was recorded in an old rice factory in Firebaugh CA. One of the voices recorded sounded like a women, maybe in her forties, say "Juana". One of the things that makes it kind of strange is because, about 200 feet from the factory is a road side memorial with a cross. And on the cross, It says "juana chino". I'm not sure if that was written on the cross or on the bent metal bars of the dish where a car accident appeared to have taken place. — Ruben H.

Electronic voice phenomena (EVP) are recordings of voice or voice-like sounds that are not audible to the human ear. This is also known as instrumental transcommunication which is the collective term for conversing with the world beyond using electronic instrumentation. These instruments can include tape recorders, camcorders, telephones, answer-machines, radios, televisions, or anything else that is electronic. The frequencies of these sounds are usually well below the range of sounds that can be perceived by the human ear. They are usually brief, emitting for the duration of only one word or a short phrase. They are sometimes in a foreign of archaic language. Many are cryptic. Parapsychologist Konstantin Raudive, who popularised the idea of electronic voice phenomena, confirms the emissions as being typically brief, usually the length of a word or short phrase. Konstantin Raudive, a Latvian psychologist who had taught at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, made over one hundred thousand recordings which he described as being communications with discarnate people. Some of these recordings were conducted in an RF-screened laboratory and contained words Raudive said were identifiable. In the 1920s, Thomas Edison told a reporter from the Scientific American magazine that he was working on a machine that would be able to contact the dead.

Ever since the invention of electronic recording devices, people have found strange and often eerie voices surfacing on their recordings. Sometimes the voices speak directly to them, despite nobody else being present. Electronic voice phenomena (EVP) is claimed by some to be the voices of souls who have passed on and wish to speak to loved ones left behind. Could this be the case with Juana Chino? Or is it something else, natural or supernatural (demonic), causing the phenomena?  

Thomas Edison, when interviewed, stated: "It is possible to construct an apparatus which will be so delicate that if there are personalities in another existence ... this apparatus will at least give them a better opportunity to express themselves." That first device was the electronic recording.

Some will say that all people are hearing in electronic voice phenomenon recordings is random noise filtered through the desire to hear something. Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus, often an image or sound, being mistakenly perceived as recognisable. 

We create sounds on the Earthly plane by passing air through our throat and mouth to create the sound frequencies our ears perceive. It has been sought to discover how a non-physical entity can produce the frequencies on tape that we can hear. Perhaps the reason the EVP researchers do not hear the voices directly is because whatever is causing the sounds are having to manipulate existing sound frequencies at the point in the machine where the processing of the analog sound to a digital format for storage is taking place?

Whatever the truth might be about electronic voice phenomena, the jury is still out.

 

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Exorcism

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What branch of Christianity teaches its preachers how to perform exorcisms? I've always been interested in becoming a minister, but I've noticed that many churches do not believe that demonic activities exist. As a youth I was exposed to some demonic events (usually at night while lying down to sleep) and so I know such things exist. I found that whenever anything happened as soon as I'd pray it would stop/go away. I was raised very religiously. Anyway, please let me know what branch of Christianity recognizes such things and instills its ministers with the knowledge of how to perform exorcisms. I desire to help others and serve God by becoming a minister, but I don't want to waste my time and money going to college to become a minister in a branch of Christianity that doesn't even recognize the real existence of Satan and demons. Is it only the Catholic church that I should be looking into? I remember you used to have a website that had a rather lengthy exorcism prayer. Could you please tell me the prayer - I doubt that I will ever come across it again by chance, and it may be some day I will have the occasion to use it for good. Thank you for your time and help, I have respected and admired you greatly for many years. — Mark

Father David C. Trosch states: "Only Catholic priests who are both legally and morally ordained and are faithful to the teachings of Sacred Scripture, as validly understood through the legitimate moral authority of the Church, and who remain spiritually sound should attempt an exorcism."

In Mark 16: 17, Jesus Christ states: "Believers will drive out demons in My name."

Our Lord confronted Satan in the wilderness. He also cast out demons during His ministry on Earth. Indeed, these comprise the majority of His miracles in the Synoptic Gospels.

How can a Christian, therefore, not recognise the real existence of the Devil and his legion of demons if Christ did and, moreover, instructed us to cast out demons in His name?

The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church in its traditional manifestation fully accepts such existence and consequently the requirement of exorcism. This embraces the traditional wing of such denominations as Anglo-Catholicism, Roman Catholicism, Old Catholicism, Eastern Catholicism, Western and Eastern Orthodoxy.

To exorcise means to deliver a person from the presence or influence of evil spirits. That the Devil, within the limits allowed by God, has retained a certain power over men even after the coming of Christ is clearly testified by Holy Scripture and the history of the Church. Jesus drove out demons from the possessed and He bestowed this power upon His apostles and disciples. In the early times of the Christian era many lay persons possessed this power as a charism.

It is in harmony with reason and faith to assume that the Devil has greater power over the unbaptised in consequence of original sin. For this reason, at a very early date, exorcisms were performed repeatedly over the catechumens in preparation for baptism. To perform these exorcisms and, in general, to exorcise persons possessed by or under the influence of evil spirits exorcists were ordained.

The rite speaks of exorcists as spiritual physicians endowed with the power of healing. This may also refer to bodily afflictions caused by the Devil; once the influence of the Devil is broken by the exorcism, the affliction ceases.

The other duties of the exorcist stood in close relation to this principal function of the Order of the Exorcistate. According to the usual interpretation of the instruction read to the ordinands, he was to direct persons under exorcism, and for that reason barred from Holy Communion, when to withdraw. Furthermore, it was his duty at sacred functions to administer the water for the washing of hands to the officiating priest. The latter ceremony symbolises purification from sin, hence a banishing of the influence of the evil spirits; it was fitting, therefore, to assign this duty to the exorcist.

A simple exorcism for priests or laity can be found on my website at this link where I also provide a solemn exorcism (as found in the Rituale Romanum) at this link.

Unless you are familiar and comfortable with Latin, I recommend the vernacular for such exorcism prayers and rituals.

From Russia With Love

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Dear Bishop Sean Manchester! I apologize for my English (unfortunately, I can`t speak and read English well). My name is Tatiana and I`m orthodox Christian from Russia. I saw Your performance on the TV- channel Discovery. And I schould like to ask His Excellency:

1. Whether you plan to publish Your books in Russia in the Russian language, as in Russia is an interest in your books?

2. I apologize for perhaps a naive question - You were not afraid to come into the house where he was a vampire from Highgate (because it was very dangerous)? I saw the image of the vampire - it is really terrible! Thank you in advance!

Help You Our Lord Jesus Christ! 

Tatiana

Thank you for your enquiry. I have many Russian friends in the Orthodox faith. Unfortunately, the books I have written are not published in Russia, much less in the Russian language; but, of course, the English language versions of each of the titles published in Great Britain will always be distributed by Gothic Press to individual customers in Russia, or, indeed, anywhere else. There are, however, no plans at present to publish my works outside the UK.

Fear is something all too easy to succumb to when dealing with the malign supernatural, and on occasion I have been as frightened as the next person, but — and this is what separates the trained and seasoned exorcist from those who understandably do not take it upon themselves to confront such demonry — it is also something one must quickly overcome when the inevitable struggle ensues between the forces of darkness and the power of the Light.

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